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Newly Approved Trash Plan Puts Emphasis on Recycling

The Bloomberg administration’s ambitious trash plan will change not only the way that the city disposes of its trash — a process that few New Yorkers even notice — but also how people take out their garbage every day.

Under the new trash plan, which was overwhelmingly approved by the City Council on Wednesday night, residents will be expected to do more recycling and composting, and eventually follow new rules for disposing of old computers and other electronic equipment.

By 2007, city officials hope to be recycling about a quarter of the 12,000 tons of waste per day — an increase from the 16 percent at present — collected from homes, schools and city-owned buildings. To reach this goal, they have outlined several new measures intended to increase the collection of recyclables and promote public recycling efforts.

For instance, the city will begin sorting soft plastic materials like yogurt cups and take-out containers from curbside residential collections, in addition to hard plastics like milk jugs, soda bottles and detergent containers, which are already recycled. Recycling bins will be placed in parks and subway stations and on commercial strips. And city officials will draft legislation to require the recycling of computers and electronic equipment, a fast-growing problem at landfills.

The city will stipulate that leaves and yard waste be placed in biodegradable paper bags, instead of plastic bags, so they can be easily composted. A pilot program on Staten Island will extend compost collections from fall to spring. And landscaping companies will be required to compost their trimmings.

In addition, the city will pick up household hazardous wastes like solvents, pesticides and chemicals.

“If successfully implemented, these measures could finally end the ups and downs of the city’s recycling program, and give it a prominent and permanent place in the waste-disposal operation,” said Eric A. Goldstein, a senior lawyer for the Natural Resources Defense Council, an environmental advocacy group.

The city will establish an independent office of recycling outreach and education that will have six staff members. It will be overseen by the Council on the Environment of New York City, in a concession to council members and others who have criticized the Sanitation Department’s recycling operation.

Marcel Van Ooyen, executive director of the Council on the Environment, said the recycling office would work with building superintendents and residents to get them to stop simply tossing things into the garbage. “There’s a real opportunity to help New Yorkers understand what can be recycled, and how to do it,” he said.

The new emphasis on recycling is something of a turnaround for the Bloomberg administration, which suspended the pickup of glass jars and plastic bottles in 2002 as a cost-saving measure and later reduced recycling collections. The full recycling program was restored in 2004.

Ed Skyler, the deputy mayor and the overseer of the trash plan, said the city would lower its recycling costs by signing a 20-year contract with a private recycling company, Sims Hugo Neu, by the end of the year. The city’s current cost for processing metal, glass and plastic recycling, $53 per ton, would be locked in against future increases. “We are going to do more of it, cheaper, and make our city more sustainable in the process,” he said.

Mr. Skyler said the city planned to pay the company about $16 million a year, and as part of the contract, the company would build a recycling processing plant at the South Brooklyn Marine Terminal in Sunset Park to handle the majority of the city’s recyclable waste.

The trash plan also calls for the city to build a recycling station on a new pier on the Hudson River, near Gansevoort Street, that would serve as a collection point for the borough’s recyclables. That waste would then be shipped by barge to the Sunset Park processing plant.

But the Gansevoort site remains far from certain: it would require state legislative approval because the site occupies part of Pier 52 in Hudson River Park. Local residents, elected officials and parks advocates have vigorously opposed it, and the trash plan raises the possibility of having to find an alternative site.

A version of this article appears in print on , on page B3 of the New York edition with the headline: Newly Approved Trash Plan Puts Emphasis on Recycling. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe